Over the last few weeks it feels like my luck is starting to change a bit. Nothing terrible, but I’ve lost some big hands at key moments and have been pretty card dead for prolonged periods in recent tournaments.

I’m winning about half of the 50-50 hands that I felt like I couldn’t lose 6 months ago - which is how it should be of course. I’m not really complaining. In fact, after the run I had in the first half of the year, I’m probably due a lot more bad luck before things have evened out.

I’ve failed to make the money in the last 6 tournaments that I’ve played. That alone isn’t exactly cause for panic, and could easily be put down to a bit of a bad run. What is a bit worrying though is that I feel I could be playing a bit better.

In a couple of tournaments I’ve been totally card dead, or just went out on 50-50 hands that played themselves, which is fine of course, but I’m a bit annoyed with myself about the Amsterdam Master Classics main event.

I got off to a great start and had 30k when the average stack was about 15, and with the field in Holland not being nearly as tough as some of the EPTs, I really felt that without any bad beats, I should have been able to press on and have a good go at making the money.

Somehow however, I managed to find myself with an 18k stack a couple of levels into the next day, with the average stack now being around 40k. I didn’t have any bad beats that I can remember during my slide from 30k and I didn’t lose any big pots either. It just seemed to be one of those days where everything I did was wrong.

On reflection, I’m a bit annoyed about my exit hand. It might actually sound like I tilted here, but that really wasn’t the case, and that’s not why I’m annoyed. I’ll tell you about it, not because I want to get a bad beat story off my chest, but because I certainly learned a lesson from my mistake, so maybe some of you will find it useful too.

With the blinds at 300-600 and antes of 50, an aggressive player in mid-position opened with a raise to 1800 and was called by quite a loose player on the button who quickly tossed in his chips - quite nonchalantly - without any pause to consider re-raising.

I reasoned that if this player had a genuine hand he would have at least considered raising, even if he did eventually decide to call (or if he had a really big hand like AA or KK, he probably would have done a bit of acting first, if he was deciding to slow-play it).

Anyway, I knew the first guy raised with a lot of hands, and I thought the caller had suited connectors or a small pair, or something, and was just hoping to catch a flop, so I decided it was a good spot to re-raise and hopefully pick up the 5k or so in the middle, which would be a very handy addition to my 18k stack.

I don’t often make moves of this type, but the last time I re-raised someone I’d been forced to show KK - which incidentally was up against the other two kings, and I’d been playing quite tight (well I was card-dead, but it probably looked like I was playing tight). So all these factors made it seem like a great idea to steal the pot. And it was - I’d read the situation correctly up to that point.

The first guy passed quickly, and the second guy did indeed have the sort of hand that I expected him to have. The problem is that I just instinctively thought that I should raise the pot, and I quite quickly fired out a 6k raise without really pausing to consider how much I should actually bet. If I had taken my time, I would have realised that now the other guy only had to call an extra 4200 into a pot that now contained nearly 11,000, so I was laying him a pretty good price to call to see the flop.

What happened next isn’t really that important, but he called, the flop came T high, and as it turned out my JT suited was in big trouble to his QT suited. Obviously my last 12k went in on the flop and that was the end of my tournament.

For the first hour or so after I busted, I had convinced myself I was a bit unlucky and that he should never have been calling my re-raise with QT. Whether or not he should have called is open to debate, but again this point isn’t really important to me either.

What is important is that I’ve now realised that I made a mistake in the hand, and that if I was confident that it was a good pot to steal (which I was), then I should have committed my whole stack to the hand and raised to 9k or something, so that he wasn’t really getting a price to peel off a flop and he knew that my whole stack was going in - even if I’d read the situation wrongly and there was a big hand out, I still would have had a chance to get lucky with my JT suited.

That lesson cost me 18k in tournament chips, but it’s probably well-spent if I never make the same mistake again. There’s also a more important overall lesson here, and that’s that it doesn’t really do any good for your game wandering off from the table shaking your head, and telling yourself that your exit was due to a bad call or a bad beat from your opponent.

What is quite useful however, is wandering off from the table and thinking about the big hands you played, and wondering if maybe there isn’t a better way of playing them the next time the situation comes up.

Anyway… I do have some good news too. I’ve managed to break my duck, in terms of cashing in an EPT (at my 5th attempt). I’m down to the last three tables and we start again today at 2pm (1pm in Ireland). I need to get off to a good start as I don’t have many chips at all, and I’m not getting too excited yet. It’s still nice to get a cash under my belt though after having a bit of a lean spell, as the longer these runs go on, the more they start to bother you.

If I make the final then I’ll report back tomorrow, but if I don’t then the World Open final that I won is on TV tomorrow night. If you’re able to get channel 5, then it’s actually worth watching I think - there was a lot of play in it compared to the crap-shoots that most of these TV finals are. If you do get a chance then I think it starts at midnight.

Marty

Editors note:

Marty just went out on….a 50-50! His A-K failing to beat QQ.

Marty in the World Open IV Final is on Channel 5 on 19/11/08 at midnight.